The use of call centers for handling business service calls has increased dramatically in the past decade. The traditional call center was based on a private branch exchange (PBX) that included core automatic call distributor (ACD) functions for connecting an inbound caller to one of a plurality of agents served by the ACD. During the 1990s, the advent of the Internet, electronic commerce, and computer telephony integration (CTI) transformed the call center in ways that enabled delivery of caller data to agents, thereby enabling agents to become more efficient and to improve customer service levels. Today, many enterprises use multiple call or contact centers (both terms are used synonymously and interchangeably in the present application) that extend across different geographic regions, with communications taking place through public switched telephone networks (PSTNs) and Internet protocol (IP) enabled networks that support multi-channel (voice, e-mail, text chat, and Web collaboration) customer interaction.
By way of background, U.S. Pat. No. 6,798,877 teaches a system in which a caller utilizes a personal computer (PC) for establishing an Internet connection to an ACD and for permitting a caller to select a particular agent. A system for providing information about a telephone caller to a telephone agent, wherein caller-specific data of the caller is used to generate a web page that displays the identified information to the agent is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,871,212. A system that can notify a customer of the availability status of agents and which allows the customer to select a particular agent from a group of desired agents by pushing a button according to voice guidance given from the ACD is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,567,848. U.S. Pat. No. 6,333,980 discloses an ACD and method for selectively connecting incoming calls to a plurality of available agents based on proficiency ratings of the particular agents. A method and apparatus for controlling an ACD by a supervisor from a remote location is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,654,458. U.S. Pat. No. 6,847,715 discloses a method for controlling administration of ACD queues by a controller and of communicating data to an agent.
An interactive voice response (IVR) system is a well known system that provides information and channels calls to call center service agents in response to the spoken words or touch tone signaling of a telephone caller. A method and apparatus for analyzing the performance of an IVR system with respect to routing of calls or contacts received in accordance with a contact flow model is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,879,685. U.S. Pat. No. 6,847,715 discloses a system for operatively integrating an ACD and an interactive voice response (IVR) unit in which an interaction input from a caller is stored and then transmitted to an appropriate agent workstation.
A variety of methods for routing calls to different geographically dispersed call centers across an IP-based network are also known in the computer telephony arts. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,798,768 teaches multimedia call routing in an IP network. U.S. Pat. No. 6,879,586 teaches an Internet Protocol Network Telephony (IPNT) call center system wherein calls are routed to remote agents over the Internet in accordance with a set of business rules. U.S. Pat. No. 6,137,862 discloses a failover mechanism for restarting a failed computer telephony server process within a call center. The failover mechanism causes one of the secondary server processes to automatically take over as the primary process if the primary process fails. A system for call center queue administration in which a feature server processes calls in a packet network by submitting a questionnaire to callers is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,882,641. The information in the questionnaire is used to automatically route the call or to reposition the call in the incoming call queue.
One problem with the prior art is that when a real or perceived emergency occurs at a particular call center, the agents at that center are typically instructed to immediately evacuate the building. The emergency condition may be in the form of a immediate or impending natural disaster (e.g., earthquake, tornado warning, flood, etc.) or man-made in nature (e.g., bomb threat, fire in the building, gas leak, chemical spill, false alarm, etc.). Because the agents are usually required to leave the building without delay, the active call sessions are simply left hanging or dropped, with the callers wondering what has happened. At present, there is no mechanism in place in existing call center systems to avoid the dropping of calls when a call center experiences an emergency.
Thus, what is a needed is a mechanism for handling active calls at a call center that is experiencing a real or perceived emergency.
By way of further background, U.S. Pat. No. 6,587,545 teaches a telecommunications system and method for handling special, or abbreviated number calls, such as 9-1-1 emergency calls, that have geographic sensitivity.